LITMIR.BIZ

      4

      Chuck turned to Carmelita, who sat head-high to him in her bunk. Worry showed in her eyes, though whether her concern had to do with her younger sister’s whereabouts or her own culpability in Rosie’s disappearance, he couldn’t be sure.

      “Stay here,” he said, his tone harsher than he’d intended. “Someone needs to be at the trailer when Rosie comes back. And stay off your phone. I want you ready to respond right away if we need you.” He strode down the walkway to the front of the trailer and spun to face Carmelita as he shoved his arm into the sleeve of his jacket. “Call us the instant Rosie comes back.”

      Carmelita pushed herself higher in the bed, her back against her pillow. “Why don’t you call her yourself?”

      Chuck froze, his arm halfway up his sleeve. “What’d you just say?” he snapped, before he recognized her sincere tone.

      “Call her phone,” Carmelita explained. “She’ll tell you where she is. Then you can yell at her all you want for not asking to go somewhere all by herself. She’s probably having hot chocolate in one of the old people’s motor homes. She’s the only little kid in the whole campground. They all love her to death.”

      Chuck sucked in the corner of his mouth. “Good idea,” he admitted.

      Janelle yanked out her phone. Her fingers flew across its face. She brought it to her ear just as the cricket-chirp ringtone of Rosie’s phone sounded from the lower bunk. Chuck reached the bed in two steps. He rooted in the rumpled sheets until he uncovered Rosie’s phone. Sheathed in its hot pink protective cover, the phone chirped to announce Janelle’s incoming call.

      In the upper bunk, Carmelita raised her shoulders to her ears in an exaggerated shrug. “She always forgets that thing.”

      Chuck punched off the incoming call and pressed Rosie’s phone to his chin. Nearly three dozen campers had been gathered at the campground entrance. That number accounted for the owners of virtually all the motor homes in the campground—and didn’t leave many who could be hosting Rosie for hot chocolate and cookies.

      Despite Carmelita’s display of nonchalance, her eyes continued to gleam with worry. A hard nugget of concern burrowed its way into Chuck’s gut as well. How many times had he and Janelle emphasized to Rosie the importance of asking permission before setting off somewhere on her own? The storm front and the worst of the sleet had passed, but it was still bone-chillingly cold outside—not the sort of weather a child should be wandering around in alone.

      Chuck and Janelle returned to the gaggle of RV owners at the front of the campground. None of the campers reported any sightings of Rosie. Next, he and Janelle knocked on motor home after motor home along the campground driveway. Only four couples answered their knocks. Rosie wasn’t sipping hot cocoa in any of the coaches, nor did the RV owners report having seen her outside through their front-facing windshields.

      The other campsites were occupied by a mixture of twenty-something couples and solo campers, all weathering the storm in their sites. Those in pop-up trailers cracked their doors a few inches, retaining the heat inside, and reported no sightings of Rosie. Those with pup tents sat marooned in tiny cars with rental company stickers on the rear bumpers, the windows heavily fogged from within. When Chuck and Janelle knocked on the cars, the storm-bound campers rolled down their windows and peered out with forlorn expressions on their faces. They, too, said they hadn’t seen Rosie—though they couldn’t see much of anything through the obscured glass of their vehicles.

      The tent camper in the site at the end of the campground rolled down his driver’s window in response to a knock from Janelle and asked in a heavy German accent how long the storm would last. His wavy blond hair and broad shoulders took up much of the interior of the compact rental sedan. Janelle and Chuck stood together at his window.

      “It’ll move out fast,” Chuck assured the German camper. “Storms always do in the desert.”

      “But the desert is supposed to be hot,” the camper groused through the thick golden beard covering his face.

      “In the summer, sure.” Chuck gave the curved roof of the small sedan an encouraging tap. “Hang in there. The weather’ll get better soon.”

      The German grunted. In answer to a query from Janelle, he reported he hadn’t seen Rosie and rolled up his window.

      “I don’t think he understands how a calendar works,” Chuck said to Janelle as they turned away.

      “I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about Rosie.”

      “The same thing I told him goes for her, too—the storm will move out fast. The day is already getting warmer. We don’t need to be too worried. Not yet, at least,” Chuck said, seeking to reassure Janelle as well as himself. “It’s just like Rosie to wander off somewhere without telling us, even in weather like this. She took her jacket with her. That’s a good thing. And it’s still morning; it’s a long time till dark.”

      “Could she have followed us out to the arch?”

      “I wouldn’t put it past her. But she wouldn’t have gotten by us without our seeing her.”

      “Unless she got lost on the way. Maybe she took the right-hand trail at the start of the loop, toward your work site. She’s been wanting to see it.”

      “That’s one possibility.” Chuck scratched the bristles on his unshaved jaw with his thumb. Then he snapped to attention.

      “What are you thinking?” Janelle asked.

      His eyes went to the canted ridge of sandstone that framed the west side of Devil’s Garden Campground. The gently sloping ridge, seventy-five feet high, served as a natural sound and visual barrier between the campground and the final stretch of road into the park.

      He scratched the air with his fingers. “Meow,” he said. “It’s those damn cats. I’m sure of it.”

      “God, I hope you’re right,” Janelle said, out of breath, as she and Chuck strode up the tilted slope of stone toward the top of the ridge. “Why didn’t we think

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